Collab Lab 14: Recap & Notes

We put together our November session with help from Susan Koen and Stacey Duchrow from Milwaukee 7’s Regional Talent Partnership. In their work to help develop the talent pipeline for industry in southeastern Wisconsin, they see a number of systemic issues that get in the way of effective career based learning experiences for students. We set up the session with the aim of mapping out factors which contribute to successful CBLE’s and identifying the key places where collaborative efforts might make a difference.

For this session, we split the attendees across 5 tables, where each participant shared their thoughts on key goals, and came together as a team to share those the felt were most important with the entire group. These included:

Help students find their passion

Students/Mentors develop relationships that allow them to know each other as a person

Students Stay in School

Students are able to build 21st Century skills

Teachers are prepared and energized

We followed this with a second round of where participants shared their thoughts on key factors which help reach those goals or stand in the way. Again, each table came to a consensus on on the key factors to share out with the larger group. These include:

Students are prepared for CBLEs

Students have a voice in their learning

Students have access to a number of diverse experiences

Students have the resources (transportation, etc,) to accept CBLE opportuntities

An organization wide culture within schools supports CBLEs (as opposed to a focus on college preparedness)

Teachers have the resources they need to deliver on their end of CBLEs

Policies (state & district) support CBLEs

Leadership embraces 21st Century skills

The level of collective will (in support of CBLEs)

CBLE is part of general conciousness

Employers recognize the benefit of CBLEs

Teachers’s ability to connect curriculum to CBLEs

Schools/industry have a common understanding of what a partnership requires

All stakeholders have an equal voice

Employers have program in place to support CBLE

Teachers are prepared to be coaches

Schools/partners have dedicated resources to make CBLEs work

As we talked through each of these factors in turn, we built up a map that gave us a first draft how these factors influence each other, and thereby, the goals we have for CBLEs. We ended the session by having the participants identify, by placing dot stickers on our map, the factors they felt were most important. The key items for the group as a whole:

An organization wide culture within schools supports CBLEs (as opposed to a focus on college preparedness)

Schools/partners have dedicated resources to make CBLEs work

Schools/industry have a common understanding of what a partnership requires

Next Steps

We’ll be working with Milwaukee 7 to pull together follow on sessions to drill into each of the top three factors and from that, identify where collaborative efforts could make a difference. Interested in participating in one of these sessions? Let us know:

Your Name (required)

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Yes! I'm interested in participating in a workgroup for effective CBLEs

We expect the initial session to run about 2 hours. What would generally work best for you?During the school dayA weekday eveningA Saturday morningA Saturday afternoonA Sunday morning